Bluescreen

"One Step Further," the anthology featuring texts from the New York magazine "n+1," received overwhelming acclaim in 2008: "Die Zeit" called the volume a "raisin bomber full of original thoughts," while the NZZ described it as "stimulating, witty, and refreshingly cheeky." Mark Greif, one of the editors of n+1, is regarded as one of the most talented American essayists of his generation, combining narrative skill with diagnostic clarity. The volume gathers his writings on the digital media that have invaded our daily lives: YouTube, reality TV, internet pornography. In one of the essays, he describes the difficulty a white East Coast academic, socialized by rock music, faces in learning to rap. Time and again, he struggles to fit 17 syllables into two measures of music.